In the Introductory Chemical Reaction Engineering Course

In practice, the issue of mixing and chemical reactions is very important in the economic aspects of chemical reaction engineering. A major priority in industrial reactors is to optimize the yield of desired products. This optimization is a function of reactor geometry, the chemical and physical characteristics of the reacting system, the degree of mixing, and the mode of supplying the reactor with reagents. Bourne and Gablinger have shown how process chemistry developed in the laboratory can go awry when scaled to industrial reactors. An excellent example of the classic seriesparallel reaction using an azo dye chemistry is presented by Bourne and Gholap. A chemist working on a bench scale will optimize this reaction to obtain very high reaction rates for the desired reaction. In the industrial scale reactor, micromixing becomes a limiting factor, negatively impacting the process chemistry.